India’s longest railroad bridge has the capacity to land fighter jets and battle tanks

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• India’s longest railroad bridge—Bogibeel bridge — which took nearly two decades and an investment of ₹56 billion ($800 million) was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday.
  
• The bridge running over the Brahmaputra has been constructed in such a way that it has the capacity to land a fighter jet and bear the heaviest battle tanks as well.
  
• This is the first and only bridge so far that has been built with welded steel-concrete composite grinders, most of which had the reinforced steel supplied by TATA Steel.

India’s longest railroad bridge — which took nearly two decades and an investment of ₹56 billion ($800 million) — was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday. The Bogibeel bridge is aimed at fostering India’s defence relations with China, and improve connectivity in North East India.

The bridge has been constructed over the river Brahmaputra, stretching over 4.9 km, making it Asia’s second-longest railroad bridge.

The Bogibeel bridge is expected to trim the rail distance from Dibrugarh in Assam to Itanagar in Arunachal Pradesh by 750 kms. The new bridge will also trim the train travel from Delhi to Dibrugarh to just three hours. It is expected to accelerate the shipment of defence forces to its neighbour, Arunachal Pradesh.

The Bogibeel bridge, which is a double decker bridge, has a three lane road on top and two-line railway tracks below the road. The bridge claims to be among the first that has been built with welded steel-concrete composite grinders, most of which had the reinforced steel supplied by TATA Steel.

In fact, the railroad bridge has been constructed in such a way that the three road strips on the lane road have the capacity to land a fighter jet and bear the heaviest battle tanks as well.

The Indian government decided to build the bridge in 1985 following unrest in the area.

There’s another bridge being built over the Brahmaputra river referred commonly to as the ‘river-bridge’ which will be 20 km long, once it’s inaugurated in 2026. It’s a four-lane bridge between the states of Assam and Meghalaya, which will shorten the distance between the cities of Dhubri and Phulbari by 203 km, saving commuters two and-a-half hours in travel time.

The proposed project will, in turn, shorten the travel time to only 20 minutes.

The proposed ‘river-bridge’ will be longer than the 9.15 km river-bridge between Dhola and Sadiya in Assam which is currently the longest beam bridge in India. Inaugurated just last year, the Dhola-Sadiya bridge cut 6 hours of travel time to just one hour for people traveling from Assam to Roing in Arunachal Pradesh.

With inputs from IANS

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